Forspoken Simply Doesn't Work with AMD Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 "Polaris" GPUs

[btarunr]

AMD Radeon RX 400 series and RX 500 series graphics cards based on the "Polaris" graphics architecture are simply unable to run "Forspoken," as users on Reddit report. The game has certain DirectX 12 feature-level 12_1 API requirements that the architecture does not meet. Interestingly, NVIDIA's "Maxwell" graphics architecture, which predates AMD "Polaris" by almost a year, supports FL 12_1, and is able to play the game. Popular GPUs from the "Maxwell" generation include the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 960. Making matters much worse, AMD is yet to release an update to its Adrenalin graphics drivers for the RX Vega, RX 5000, and RX 6000 series that come with "Forspoken" optimization. Its latest 23.1.2 beta drivers that come with these optimizations only support the RX 7000 series RDNA3 graphics cards. It's now been over 50 days since the vast majority of AMD discrete GPUs have received a driver update.



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[Dirt Chip]

What is the min sys req of this game?
Can 960\970gtx run it playable (beyond just able to lunch into the game) at all?

Anyway, (very) old tech and new AAA titles don't mix well so this isn't new or unprecedented.

 

[john_]

When many many years ago, AMD had support for DirectX 10.1 and Nvidia didn't, their products where still at 10.0, a known company released a patch that was adding DirectX 10.1 support to a known game, that latter whould also became one of the most known series. Somehow that company was convinced to remove that patch.


That being said, Polaris was an architecture that was offering value. Still it was a mistake to not include a feature that the competition was offering years ago. Raja did it again I guess.

Fun fact. Does that game support FSR? GTX 1060 owners finally will have the chance to laught at RX 580 owners. Especially if FSR is supported.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

What is the min sys req of this game?
Can 960\970gtx run it playable (beyond just able to lunch into the game) at all?

Anyway, (very) old tech and new AAA titles don't mix well so this isn't new or unprecedented.

No it's not I agree fully but I am still surprised, it's taken years for those Polaris to hit a limiter.
Only one game so far, I expect some upgrade phonecalls are due me soon.

 

[Gahl1k]

What is the min sys req of this game?
Can 960\970gtx run it playable (beyond just able to lunch into the game) at all?

Anyway, (very) old tech and new AAA titles don't mix well so this isn't new or unprecedented.

You need a 1650 minimum to run the game at low settings 1080p and FSR Quality (it averages 32 FPS). It's simply too demanding for no obvious reason.

Just to clarify, 1650 is anywhere from 20%-60% faster than 960 depending on the game.

 

[Fouquin]

Interestingly, NVIDIA's "Maxwell" graphics architecture, which launched around the same time as "Polaris,"

Which launched a full generation before Polaris, not even remotely around the same time. They're nearly 2 years apart. Polaris launched AFTER the 10 series debut.

I'm not surprised that Maxwell is getting support for FL12_1, similar to how Fermi has "DX12" it's all in the software. AMD bakes in hardware solutions and nVidia leaves some flexibility for software solutions.

 

[catulitechup]

apparently runs on polaris but using linux, example with rx 580

 

[Imouto]

It does run on Polaris.

EDIT: What catulitechup said.

 

[PerfectWave]

apparently runs on polaris but using linux, example with rx 580

they said it use vulkan api

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I am actually happy to see limits being touched.
Things are meant to move forward and Polaris has already served a viable term.
I bought three reference cards over a time and had two by week two.
They earned they're worth back for me and I had many a good gaming hour on them for two to three years.
Then I got and used a Vega64 for near 6 years until it's use was suboptimal then got a 7900XT and I'm way past thinking that Polaris Should still be used, it does make a sound argument via low end usage but it's age means we're a CPU generation away from Igpu pissing on it, from Intel, yep.

Let the past go now IMHO 8/10 years is 3/4 too many IE too little progress.


Forsaken!, Any good?!.

 

[Arco]

There comes a time when crap hardware is crap hardware. Sometimes games have to move along but in a meaningful way.

 

[bug]

@btarunr If you cared to check, you would have found out the system requirements do not include Polaris.

But otherwise yes, if it requires DX 12.1, it will not run on a card that only offers DX12.0. It runs on Linux, because over there DX calls are translated to Vulkan, so the DX level of support doesn't mean much.

That said, it would seem this game does not "run" on anything. It just crawls.

 

[shovenose]

Wow a 10 year old video card can’t run the latest games? That’s newsworthy! /s

 

[sepheronx]

Now, What if, it works

apparently runs on polaris but using linux, example with rx 580

Since now I am moving to linux, If I had the card I would have tested it myself. Essentially I figured it would work in Linux since it uses Vulkan API and that it emulates a lot of the DX features with Proton.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

How's that FineWine(tm) working out, eh?

Wow a 10 year old video card can’t run the latest games? That’s newsworthy! /s

Erm.....the 10 year old cards run the game fine. It's the 6 year old polaris cards that dont run it.

 

[bug]

Now, What if, it works

Since now I am moving to linux, If I had the card I would have tested it myself. Essentially I figured it would work in Linux since it uses Vulkan API and that it emulates a lot of the DX features with Proton.

I'm not sure what would you have tested. System requirements say you need at least a 5500XT for... wait for it... 720p@30fps. Add the emulation overhead and suddenly you'd be checking if Proton supports CGA graphics.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I am actually happy to see limits being touched.
Things are meant to move forward and Polaris has already served a viable term.
I bought three reference cards over a time and had two by week two.
They earned they're worth back for me and I had many a good gaming hour on them for two to three years.
Then I got and used a Vega64 for near 6 years until it's use was suboptimal then got a 7900XT and I'm way past thinking that Polaris Should still be used, it does make a sound argument via low end usage but it's age means we're a CPU generation away from Igpu pissing on it, from Intel, yep.

The issue is there has been no viable replacement for polaris, everything is @$$ expensive.

Let the past go now IMHO 8/10 years is 3/4 too many IE too little progress.

There's nothing wrong with getting the most out of hardware. It's better for your personal economics, better for the environment, ece.

Forsaken!, Any good?!.

It's a boring crap game with optimization done by a blind monkey. I mean if you wanted to watch a 3 hour movie that nobody cares about and throw in some walking simulator segments then sure I guess, I'd rather watch grass grow.

EDIT: I forgot, on top of running like a heroin addict, the game looks like complete crap. I've seen better looking PS3 games.

 

[bug]

It's a boring crap game with optimization done by a blind monkey. I mean if you wanted to watch a 3 hour movie that nobody cares about and throw in some walking simulator segments then sure I guess, I'd rather watch grass grow.

 

[sepheronx]

I'm not sure what would you have tested. System requirements say you need at least a 5500XT for... wait for it... 720p@30fps. Add the emulation overhead and suddenly you'd be checking if Proton supports CGA graphics.

did you watch the video that was provided?

Anyway, it was to test to see if it even works, to which it does, in Linux.

 

[FierceRed]

When it came time to choose my GPU in 2015, I did research on this very forum and ran searches for both AMD and NVDA driver releases. I compared the release post dates with the release dates of the games they were optimizing for. I found that NVDA was consistently putting out Day 1, Day 0 or even Day -3 driver releases for upcoming games. AMD was consistently behind, with maybe 3-4 times a year when their driver release was a Day 1 match.

They have legitimately gotten better at this over the years - as a forum search today would prove - but they have yet to match the consistency of NVDA timings.

I still consider AMD an unsung hero of the processor industry, as they're typically "first" in socializing new design concepts or features that the industry would then run with and do better than them.

When it comes to GPU driver releases however, this type of news unfortunately doesn't surprise anymore.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

The way it looks, this is the right hardware to run it on.

 

[mechtech]

If it wasn’t for covid that games value would be more than those vid cards lol

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

If it wasn’t for covid that games value would be more than those vid cards lol

So it's all 5G's fault

 

[brutlern]

"Interestingly, NVIDIA's "Maxwell" graphics architecture, which predates AMD "Polaris" by almost a year, supports FL 12_1, and is able to play the game.". Why is this interesting? Nvidia decided at that time to include future features in their cards. That's all.

As for driver level game optimizations, I can tell you that it's marketing bs, on both Nvidia and Amd's side. I've used Nvidia cards for 10 years, and I can count on one hand how many times the "game ready driver" was actually necessary. As for AMD, I've played Forspoken with 23.1.1 and than 23.1.2 and there is no difference in performance.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Soooo.... the slowest card that can run this is the GTX 745 (Maxwell), is that right? And there's a demo...

Oh I gotta try this. Any predictions for FPS at 1080p? 720p? I'll go first: 4 and 6.